Blue Linen Dress Re-Do: Trim Found!

So today I took my DS to have lunch with daddy during daddy's lunch hour. There's a great fabric store right around the corner from my DH's workplace so naturally I had to stop. This place is extensive and stocks everything from apparel fabric to whole hides of leather. I had two things on my "to buy"  list. The first I was disappointed in: faux fur for my son's bear Halloween outfit. The second and successful find was trim for the blue dress. I found a short remenant in the colors I have as well as two larger pieces and I've pretty much decided to go with the lighter themed of the two. I've posted the picture below.


I don't like to buy much commercial trim (but do due to time constraints) because of the mostly glaringly obvious non-period materials and patterns. There's a great picture from a class that was presented and I use it as a good visual aid. I'm trying to find it now. Basically staying away from all of the super shiny metallic silver and gold stuff and sticking with trims that you usually find in the upholstery section is a good bet. That's actually where I found all three of my finds today. The trim pictured above is fairly simple being two twists of blue and gold laid side by side and stitched to the beige backing with light blue scalloped edges. It's just enough color and simple enough to go with the dress. Everything else I had was too modern or not in the right colors to be used. I'm hoping that with the 8 yards that I purchased I'll have enough. I was silly and forgot to measure the hem so I had to guess-timate. The thing is, I don't get out to that store often and the reel had the original sticker ripped off. So I couldn't tell you where to get this if I wanted to. I'll be keeping a swatch of course for future reference but I'm not sure what I'll do if I don't have enough to complete the dress...I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

I was planning on doing more work on the dress this evening but my DS decided not to nap today which meant that keeping him on track for bed time took two parents, not just the one. We also tried to move a bit of our stuff from the garage into our new shed in preparation for the winter delivery of wood pellets that keeps our home toasty warm  during the winter. Perhaps I'll get some work done tomorrow! I have ironed out the muslin to cut the mock ups out of and I am really looking forward to pining them onto the dress to see if my patterning skills have rusted at all! That's all for now, hopefully I'll have more news after the weekend!

Blue Linen Dress Re-Do Update

So after some mild hiccups in delivery I have a new bias tape maker arriving today! YAY! I'll be able to move on after making all this bias tape. I'm hoping today to try out by drafted pattern for the side piece as well.

This is the pattern piece to the left that I've drafted onto some plain brown wrapping paper. (My preference for my own drafted patterns because of it's sturdiness.) I did not do this freehand, I'm not that talented. I did use my french curve tool a.k.a. Dritz's Styling Design Ruler. (It's something that all costumers should have!) I'll talk about that tool at another time though. The next step is to cut it out of some muslin and try it on the dress to see if I need to make any adjustments before cutting it out of the dark blue linen. I'm hoping I can get at least this much done today before I have to go pick up my little man at daycare at 3:30.


The hem will have to be addressed next and maybe I can get that done tomorrow or Friday night. I'm hoping to have the major components of the dress put together (or fixed) no later than next week. By that I mean the added side pieces, hem piece, and shoulders. I'm thinking that there may need to be a facing put on the neck as well but I'll see when I take the shoulders apart.

The bad news is that the lovely gold fabric in the swatch that I had planned to use for bias tape to cover the joining of the dark blue and light blue material refuses to be turned into bias tape. Even after several tries with the bias tape machine and doing it manually. GRR. Now I will have to revert to more commercial sources. I happen to have a fair stash of commercial trims of varying historical "period-ness." Meaning, some are more period looking than others. I'm sure that I will spend a significant amount of time trying to decide what route to take but so far I'm leaning towards a plain bias tape trim or something equally plain in my designed trim. I will NOT be doing a blue trim though. I'm looking for something with higher contrast. Yellow, gold, or possibly orange are colors that I think would be ideal.